The Dreamtime - by Mstyslav Chernov

About the Book

A fusion of documentary and psychological thriller inspired by true events conceived and written over an eight-year period. Drawing on the Indigenous Australian concept of dreamtime, the novel explores a society's collective experience of war and conflict and is based on real events that the author, a war correspondent and photojournalist, witnessed during the war in eastern Ukraine and the migration crises in southern Europe over recent years.

Book Synopsis

A Kirkus Best Indie Book of the Year & a Library Journal Best World Literature read, from Pulitzer Prize-winning AP Journalist and Director/Producer/Writer of the Academy Award-winning documentary 20 Days in Mariupol

"[A] book for our times--vivid enough to grab us and not let go." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A powerful psychological thriller about borderline situations in life, hopes and dreams. Written against the backdrop of the war, before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the story acquires an additional passionate and humanistic significance." -- Andrey Kurkov, author of Grey Bees

"[T]his timely novel from a Ukrainian author excels at examining the connection between reality and dreams and exploring the effects of war on the human psyche." -- Library Journal

The Dreamtime is a fusion of documentary and military fiction inspired by the author's experience as an award-winning war correspondent that offers a unique and gritty point of view on the horrors of war through four intertwining narratives. Parallel storylines from a guilt-ridden doctor trying to exorcise his demons by exposing himself to war; a young woman tending to her ailing father as the bombs fall around them in Russian-occupied Slovyansk; a mysterious sociopath playing a cat-and-mouse game; and a forensic expert solving a murder case while trying to save her marriage with a discharged soldier bring a raw intensity and a deeply personal connection to the effects of war. As the threads of their stories unfurl, through harrowing scenes of personal and collective trauma, an enigmatic pattern emerges.

Shifting from Ukraine's war-torn Donbas to southern Europe and southeast Asia, The Dreamtime ties together themes of existential conflict, the blurred line between reality and dreams, and how easily the boundary dissolves between waking life and nightmare. Originally published in Kyiv in 2020, The Dreamtime has been well received by critics around the world and praised for its realism in depicting war, for its creative literary depiction of how dreams reflect the psyche, and for its masterly prose.

Review Quotes

"This is one of the most unique works of fiction, though largely biographical, that I have read. The realm between reality and dreams begins to fracture more and more the further one gets through the book, which brings it to a dreamlike state of the four major characters who are involved. The author, who is a journalist, incorporates his experience on the frontlines filing stories for people to read in their homes while at the same time taking a multi-layered look at Ukraine and the war that is bringing it to the brink of existential existence."

--Kevin Winter, Tulsa Book Review

"Scene by scene, Chernov vividly describes battles fought in the streets, the bombing and shelling of apartments, and the dreams of those on the front lines, physically and psychologically. ... [T]his timely novel from a Ukrainian author excels at examining the connection between reality and dreams and exploring the effects of war on the human psyche."

-- Library Journal

"This ambitious structure gives the novel a disorienting quality that underscores themes of trauma and loss . . . First published in Kyiv in 2020 in conjunction with a visual art exhibition on media and culture, Chernov's now translated novel will resonate even more today, given the current escalation of Russia's ongoing attack on Ukraine."

-- Booklist

"A powerful psychological thriller about borderline situations in life, hopes and dreams. Written against the backdrop of the war, before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the story acquires an additional passionate and humanistic significance."

-- Andrey Kurkov, author of Grey Bees

"The Dreamtime is a dark, multi-layered, modern Ukrainian war novel. It demonstrates that war doesn't only occur on the front line, but that it quickly and relentlessly corrodes society, breaking down its structure. Chernov's dense, labored prose is tightly intertwined like blades of grass after a storm. But when engaged with, these interweaving shadows and voices gradually become clear and transparent to the reader."

-- Serhiy Zhadan, author of The Orphanage

"An ambitious yet highly readable book, Mstyslav Chernov's The Dreamtime builds on the tragically rich personal experience of this acclaimed and fearless photographer whose deeply moving images from the world's conflict zones, and especially from the war in his native Ukraine, are now seared in our memory. This novel helps us understand how life goes on in wartime--and how it changes us irrevocably. An impressive literary debut that successfully transfers Chernov's keen eye and psychological insight to the page."

-- Vitaly Chernetsky, University of Kansas

"Kaleidoscopic and deeply unsettling, The Dreamtime depicts how the routine of war dissolves boundaries between civilian and soldier, care and violence, waking life and nightmare. Chernov has written an expansive, thought-provoking Ukrainian novel for the early post-Maidan era."

-- Sonya Bilocerkowycz, 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow; author of On Our Way Home from the Revolution: Reflections on Ukraine (2019)

"The Dreamtime is about survival, living through war, mental illness, and alcoholism in a world where even love has jagged edges. The parallel storylines make it a page turner as we look for moments of hope and vulnerability. This is the creation of a new history."

- Olena Jennings, author of Temporary Shelter (Cervena Barva Press, 2021)

"Chernov is a singular voice writing about Ukraine today, and The Dreamtime is essential reading to understanding the ways that war has infiltrated people's everyday lives far beyond the front lines. It is an ambitious novel that draws together diverse perspectives to reflect the raw emotions of life and death."

-- Emily Channell-Justice, Director, Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program

"Reading the news about and being an eyewitness to the Russian war in Ukraine, there is a strong desire to wish that the current events are all a dream and that one only needs to wake up for it all to disappear. In his novel, Mstyslav Chernov skillfully captures the war's origins, paying attention to important details of the individual choices and tragedies of his characters. Drawing on the images and testimonies he has collected during his time as a war photographer, he masterfully combines the real with the fictional to capture his and others' unique experiences, revealing another angle of war--one that is intimate and hidden. In doing so, he creates a story where everything may be true, but may also be the author's dream. But, being in someone else's dream is one of the most fascinating things, isn't it?"

-- Kateryna Iakovlenko, Ukrainian visual culture scholar, critic, and writer

About the Author

Mstyslav Chernov is a Pulitzer Prize-winning Ukrainian war correspondent, filmmaker, photographer, and novelist known for his coverage of the Ukrainian revolution, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the wars in Iraq, Syria, and Nagorno-Karabakh, and Taliban rule in Afghanistan after U.S. withdrawal, as well as for his art installations and exhibitions. Chernov is an Associated Press (AP) journalist and the President of the Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers (UAPF). In addition to being a finalist for the Livingston Award (2019) for his work on the civil unrest in Belarus and the Rory Peck Award (2017) for his coverage of the Battle of Mosul, he has won several prestigious awards, including two Royal Television Society Awards for his coverage of the downing of flight MH17 (2015; 2016), and the Pulitzer Prize Winner in Public Service (2023), the Georgy Gongadze Prize (2022), the Knight International Journalism Award (2022), the DW Freedom of Speech Award (2022), a Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award (2022), the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award for Courage in Journalism (2022), a Free Media Award (2022), and an Oliver S. Gramling Award (2022) for documenting the siege in Mariupol during the 2022 Russian invasion as one of the few remaining international journalists in that city. Chernov is the director and producer of the AP/FRONTLINE documentary 20 Days in Mariupol, which won the Audience Award for World Cinema Documentary at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. He was named Ukrainian Photographer of the Year in 2013 and 2015. He was born in Eastern Ukraine.

More information on Chernov's journalism and exhibitions can be found on his website mstyslav.com and his Instagram instagram.com/mstyslav.chernov.